Tine Melzer
Short Biography
Tine Melzer uses language as material. The amazement and enchantment of language and its mechanisms between humans is the nucleus of all of her art work; it is situated on the edge of theory and practice, knowing and seeing, describing and showing, text and image. She holds a BA degree in both philosophy and fine arts and currently reads for a Phd in the Arts to connect both disciplines. Her research is the interdisciplinary attempt to make Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gertrude Stein meet (as a model case) to show the edge(s) between image and text in ordinary language.

The work aims to host concepts on language in order to give language sensory tactility and spatial visual dimensions. Melzer can be seen as a ‘translator’ from theoretical aspects on language – and our own experience within it – into visual perception. The work aims to visualize questions about our lives with verbal language in the context of visual art, which most people experience and accept as a language in one way or another. These questions and the resulting art works are simple and purified.

Melzer’s work is multidisciplinary: it employs means of sculpture, installation, graphic printwork, book art and writing. Taking the world literally and having language show itself in the reduced undertakings of creation is a key effort in her work. What might sound dry and theoretical, are simple forms for exciting phenomena of ordinary language: our jokes, gossip, doubts, failures and aha-moments. The language-games we play are the material for the work, the work succeeds if we can recognize our own behaviour or experiences in the structure called ‘language’.

Her visual work was shown lately at Projectroom of Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Museum voor hedendaagse Kunst MuhKA Antwerp (BE), de Appel and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL). She has realized work in public, amongst which the  permanent installation HIER in public space of Nuremberg, Germany and teaches internationally.

published for GALLERY TITANIK, Turku, Finland, 2010


Tine Melzer’s research work is supported by Fonds voor beeldende kunsten, bouwkunst en vormgeving, Amsterdam and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Amsterdam.

Please contact her via tine(at)tokyo.com